Braun: Families of Lockerbie bombing victims react to convicted bomber's death, are still haunted by tragedy

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerPortrait of Bob Monetti in the pre-school his family owns. His son Rick was a 20-year-old Syracuse University student who was a passenger on Pan Am Flight 103 when it blew up over Lockerbie Scotland in December of 1988.

They still are haunted by how the people they loved died — trapped in a falling, spinning, disintegrating airplane, the skin of its fuselage punctured by a small Semtex bomb in a cargo bay 35,000 feet up in the black, frigid sky over Scotland — and so it is a wonder they can talk about it at all, even now, 24 years later. Yet they do talk about it and what they say reflects their spirit, memories, a determination to find truth.

"Someone with far greater wisdom and power now will make the final judgment on him,’’ said Marie Klein, of Flemington, when she was told the man convicted of placing the bomb, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, died yesterday in Libya. Klein’s daughter Patricia was one of his victims.

"I can’t say I am glad and I can’t say I am unhappy.’’

"If he died in horrible pain, screaming out in terror, I would be happy to hear that,’’ said Susan Cohen of Cape May Courthouse. Her only child Theo was killed. "But I don’t feel the sense of exhilaration I felt before" — when Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was killed by rebels in October.

Klein and Cohen and others are asked to talk about it again and again, every time something else happens in the slow, seemingly endless chain of events that erupted in horror on Dec. 21, 1988, when Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York hit the ground in the village of Lockerbie, killing 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 people on the ground.

Sabri Elmhedwi/EPAA file photo from 2009, shows convicted Lockerbie PanAm airline bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi (in wheelchair) visited in Tripoli Central Hospital by a delegation of African parliamentarians in Tripoli, Libya. According to media reports, to Megrahi died in his home in Libya.

Of the 270 victims, 33 were from New Jersey, including two entire families of four, the Woods of Willingboro and the Owens of Cherry Hill. The oldest was 79; the youngest, 2 months old. Many were in their 20s, college students returning home for Christmas after a semester abroad, including 35 from Syracuse University.

It was modern history’s worst attack on American civilians until Sept. 11, 2001, and many family members have been unhappy with how decisions were made in response. The slowness in identifying those responsible; the decision to hold a trial outside the United States; the conviction of only one man, al-Megrahi, in what was obviously a conspiracy; the reconciliation with Gadhafi leading to a resumption of the oil trade with his country; and, finally, al-Megrahi’s release from a Scottish prison for "compassionate" reasons three years ago because he was said to be about to die of cancer.

"What’s the big deal now?" asked Robert Monetti of Cherry Hill. ``The man was supposed to have been dead three years ago.’’ His son Richard was a Syracuse student; Monetti was a long-time leader of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, an organization that subsequently helped organize relatives of 9/11 victims.

But Monetti quickly added he knows why this is a big deal. Al-Megrahi’s death eliminates what he called a "distraction" that might have prevented the new regime in Libya from cooperating with American and Scottish officials in finding and charging more officials responsible for the attack on Pan Am 103.

Joan Dater of Mahwah, still active with the victims’ group, is encouraged that al-Megrahi’s death will lead to cooperation between the new Libyan regime and law enforcement from Scotland and the United States. She noted both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Frank Mulholland, Scotland’s chief prosecutor, were in Libya earlier this month.

Mitsu Yasukawa/For the Star-LedgerJoan Dater of Mahwah , whose daughter Gretchen was killed on Pam Am 103 when she was 20 year-old, holds her daughter's photo at her home in Mahwah on 10/20/2011.

Top suspects, she said, include Abdullah al-Senussi, Gadhafi’s chief intelligence officer and brother-in-law, and Moussa Koussa, a former foreign minister. Al-Senussi was arrested in Mauritania and Koussa, who defected from the collapsing regime, sought asylum in the United Kingdom.

"This is a very important story,’’ said Dater, whose daughter Gretchen was killed. "With al-Megrahi gone, a new government in Libya, and with Mueller and the Scottish showing interest, it looks like we may finally have the resolve to find out what really happened, who really should be held to account.’’

It may mean new trials in the mass murder case. The Scottish parliament repealed part of double jeopardy protections long part of British common law. That might allow for a retrial of al-Megrahi’s co-defendant, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who was acquitted at the same trial that resulted in al-Megrahi’s conviction.

"We know most of what happened but not all the people responsible have been brought to trial,’’ said Frank Duggan, the president of the Pan Am 103 families group.

He cautioned against believing new trials could happen soon. The French convicted al-Senussi and sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment for his role in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over the Sahara desert that killed 170 people; they want him in France. The International Court of Criminal Justice has issued a warrant for al-Senussi’s arrest for the killing of anti-Gadhafi rebels. The Libyans want him tried there for murdering political prisoners.